


Of Ratty Shirts and Beasts (and such and so forth)

by SnippySchnapps



Category: Original Work
Genre: (unless someone offers in which case i will die like the nonbinary disaster I actually am), Alternate Universe - Horror, Done for nanowrimo, Eldritch, General spooky shit, I really love my spooky bois ok, Kind of crack-ish, NaNoWriMo, Now with ROMANCE, au of an original work, but also humour, elder gods being dorks, eldritch au, it be like that sometimes, no beta we die like men, thats it thats the entire plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-08-29 08:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16740274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnippySchnapps/pseuds/SnippySchnapps
Summary: “Th͢ąt̡’̢l̢l b̷e̷ £1̛0͜.͡9́9,” says the towering, eldritch creature behind the till.Mechanically, the customer brings out her purse. She doesn’t realise she’s left her groceries until she’s already halfway across the parking lot.In the store, the creature called Sam is managing to look very much like a kicked puppy. Turning to his co-worker (Jo, says her name tag), he tilts his head, and asks in a very upset voice, “Wa͘s ́i̴t sơm͜et̕h̷i͜ng I s̀aid͢?̨”͝Jo reaches over and pats the part of his shoulder not covered by gold-blue fur in consolation.





	1. In which Jo wants a raise and Sam isn’t helping

**Author's Note:**

> For context: this is a pet project in which an eldritch god decides hey! Humans are cool, I’m gonna go hang with them, and promptly makes friends with everyone they possibly can. Sorry about any mistakes - I tend to miss a few even after checking it over a few times, so if you see something weird, just let me know and I’ll fix it :>

  
Sam doesn’t talk much. Or, well, he does, but not about anything that makes sense. Usually. At least, nothing that makes sense to _her_ , but to be fair, Sam himself doesn’t really make much sense to humanity in general, she thinks, so she doesn’t particularly mind. He seems to like it when she listens, or tries to, oddly flattered even though Jo’s a human and he’s something much, much more.

But he doesn’t talk much about _himself_ , and that’s the crux of the matter.

Jo knows that Sam likes peanut butter and hates mayonnaise, and that he doesn’t really understand the point of clothes, but that he likes them anyway because it’s a Human Thing To Do and he likes humans, and that he’s usually much bigger and scarier than he is in the shop, but he makes himself softer and rounder and smaller because he knows how afraid humans can be sometimes, and he doesn’t want them to fear him, he wants to be a friend.

Jo thinks, secretly, that this is adorable.

Not everyone agrees with her. Most people, in fact, think she’s crazy, absolutely out of her mind, completely and utterly off the deep end, and many are not afraid to tell her so. But Sam is gentle and surprisingly shy, and telling him to leave the shop would be like telling a child that Santa isn’t real.

The Manager writes his cheques like any other employee, and sometimes Jo wonders if he even knows that Sam is anything other than human; one would think it’d be easy to spot, but from the day the strange being showed up with an application form, he’d shown no sign that anything was amiss, as if large, antlered creatures wandering into the shop and asking for employment was completely normal. Then again, The Manager isn’t entirely normal himself; she’s not even sure he _has_ a name.

But anyway, he writes Sam’s cheques, and Jo can’t for the life of her figure out what he spends them on, other than a frankly ridiculous amount of chocolate and more peanuts than anyone should probably eat in a day without it being a health risk.

(Actually, now that she thinks about it, that’s probably _all_ he spends it on. It _is_ a lot of chocolate and peanuts.)

Wait - what was her point again?

Oh, right. Sam, and not talking about himself.

The thing - the _Thing - the thing is_ -

Sam isn’t human, and Sam is Strange, and Sam probably isn’t actually called Sam, and she has _no idea_ why he works in the shop.

That would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s pretty sure he’s some kind of god or something. She’s done her research - magic isn’t as daunting and mysterious as it once was, hasn’t been for a long time. The house next to her’s is inhabited by an old couple with skin made of cracked, dusty stone, and one of the other shops in town is the base of operations for a coven of witches; the non-human aspects of her coworker aren’t the problem, here.

The _problem_ is that if Sam is, indeed, a god or deity or something of the sort, that raises a lot of questions that she simply doesn’t have answers to, most of which eventually circle back to _why is he here_ and _what does he want_ and, worst of all, _is he just in it for the long con?_

That last one always leaves a bad taste in her mouth; she wants to think it isn’t true, but deep down, she remembers the horror stories. Demons pretending to be helpful household spirits only to turn around and steal your soul, vindictive Fae Folk with quick wits and quicker tongues that’ll wrap you around their fingers faster than you can say _I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it_ , and she knows, _she knows_ Sam could be so, _so_ much worse, if he turns out to be anything like that. But she doesn’t think about it, doesn’t _want_ to think about it, because he’s her friend, and she _does_ want to trust him.

But.

The doubt lingers.

She goes home feeling guilty, and tries not to feel too bad.

It’s not like he knows she’s scared, after all.

***

Ceros knows that the human called Jo is scared.

Ceros belongs to the forest as much as it belongs to Ceros, the interlocking shapes of His antlers the same as the branches above Him, the trees bending around Him until it’s impossible to tell one from the next, twisting into each other in strange ways only made possible by the lack of watching eyes; He knows by now not to look too close. The trees only bend around those who pay them no mind, who don’t spend too long trying to find a perspective which makes sense, who allow themselves to blindly accept each nonsensical deer-trail as it appears, no matter how sure they are of its impossible twists and directionless turns.

… He is beginning to learn that concepts like these are not very ‘human’ things.

Outwardly, Jo doesn’t seem to care. Jo just stays and listens, even when He knows there’s no possible way she could be understanding anything He says. She stays, and He appreciates this.

But, sometimes, He is reminded that she is, in fact, a human - reminded by sharp breaths and unconscious flinches, by stuttering heartbeats and averted eyes, by the ever-present knowledge that beneath fragile skin are fragile bones and a tiny, vulnerable heart - because humans are so small, and Ceros is so very large, and He often worries that even while trying to protect them, they might break in His presence. But she tries, and it’s such an honest attempt that He doesn’t care, because she says that they are ‘friends’, and that matters so much more than any amount of fear.

He’s not entirely sure what drew Him to the human settlement originally. They’d existed in His forest for some time - not long, not by His standards, but long enough to be comfortable, to be familiar. Logically, nothing had changed to catch his interest.

But Ceros has never been a creature of logic, anyway, so why should it matter?

He loves His forest, loves it dearly, loves it like a part of Himself, but He love the town, too, and He loves its people and all their charms and… quirks.

Not all of the residents are human, He’d realised after his first journey out of the woods; only a few know His true Name, though. Most simply call Him Sam, the name He’d scratched onto one of those funny little cards that all the others working at the shop had, and that’s fine. He likes it. It makes Him feel like one of them; a part of something. It is not His True Name, but it is still Important to Him.

Ceros hasn’t been A Part Of Something in a while. But that’s okay, because now He can just appreciate what He has now even more.

He’d tried to explain this to Jo, once. She’d nodded along while stocking the shelves, and He’d told her about the others of His kind, how they’d loved and lost and then left, and how He’s alone, now, in His forest, without any company save the trees and the birds and the tiny little creatures hunting and being hunted all around Him.

Surprisingly, she seemed to have understood; at least, it seemed that way - she’d put an arm around His shoulders - or tried to, but it was more like his waist - when He’d finished and smiled, and told Him that He didn’t have to be alone if He didn’t want to be, and _you bring in tourists with those antlers of yours anyway, Sam, so you may as well stay._

Her words and her intentions didn’t quite match up, but that was okay, too, because humans don’t seem to make sense the majority of the time He’s around them, and she’d been radiating _comfort_ and _kinship_ and as far as He’s concerned, that’s all that should ever matter.

***

For a while, things seem to be settling into a new normal.

Jo arrives at work every week day at 7:00 AM to the sight of Sam stocking shelves while one of the janitors works around (and as far from) him as possible. Sometimes The Manager makes an appearance, but never does much, and barely even seems to notice most of his employees. Jo takes her place behind the register or elsewhere in the shop, and spends most of the day talking to Sam or pretending not to be on her phone.

After a while, she almost forgets things had ever been considered “weird”.

She’s never bored, though.

Sam brings with him Strange Things. What exactly this means tends to vary day-by-day, and sometimes she barely even notices - if there’s something more uncanny about the customers on one day than usual, then who is she to judge? She once ate an entire can of whipped cream in about thirty seconds. A few extra eyes isn’t really that weird, and if that guy without a face wants to stand and stare at the freezer for three hours, then she won’t care so long as he actually buys something. And he usually does, so it’s fine.

Other times, the Strange Things are more noticeable. Once, she came in only to be struck with the feeling of something being very, very wrong, and didn’t notice what it was until about an hour later when she looked out the window and noticed with a vague sort of confusion that the sky and the ground seemed to have swapped places; she never managed to figure out if the store was upside-down or the world was, but thinking about it too hard made her head hurt, so she just dropped it after a while. Another time, she’d just gone into the store cupboard to get something, only to find herself in the middle of a forest; the thing about this event was that she somehow hadn’t noticed until she’d found her way back out, hands empty of whatever forgotten thing she had been looking for, and the sense that hours had passed, but when she’d looked at the clock it had barely been a minute since she’d left.

Sam had asked her if she’d had fun. On impulse, she’d told him that yes, she had, thank you, but later in the day she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what she’d meant.

A few employees have quit, since Sam showed up. She’d been worried that The Manager might take this badly, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed, so Jo just picks up the slack where she can and keeps an ear open for anyone looking for jobs in the area. Sam, of course, brings tourists, so she also takes a picture of him to show a friend to ask about postcards; the picture comes out strangely distorted and vaguely horrifying, but it’s usable, so she pays an initial fee and promises to split the profit.

The postcards do amazingly well; Sam seems flattered.

He asks, one day, if he could bring in a friend to pose for more postcards; Jo, without thinking, agrees.

She’s not sure whether or not this was a mistake.

Hiraeth is… distinctly more _unsettling_ than Sam is, even to her. She decides that this is probably because of the _teeth_ \- they tend never to stick to one form for long, but they always have _far_ too many of them, for one thing, and they stretch their mouth into a permanent, gruesome smile which sets her on edge whenever she sees it. Or maybe it’s the eyes - brighter than Sam’s, which is something she hadn’t thought possible, and wilder, more feral, intelligent in that way a predator is when stalking something small and fast. And somehow, even though Sam generally looks much more like an animal than Hiraeth, there’s something untamed and unpredictable in their countenance, and it makes her want to look over her shoulder every five seconds whenever they’re in the vicinity but not quite in her line of sight.

It’s distracting.

Sam _adores_ them.

It’s obvious from the moment they appear; the two don’t talk, as such, and Hiraeth doesn’t seem to ever look directly at _anything_ in particular, but they still manage to somehow exchange gentle words and even gentler looks. She hadn’t realised Sam was capable of developing crushes, but that’s definitely what it looks like from her perspective, and it doesn’t seem entirely unrequited, either.

Having Hiraeth around can sometimes be… troubling, to say the least. Compared to them, Sam is a model citizen - he may ask the occasional strange question or make an accidental faux-pas, but Hiraeth has none of the qualms that Sam does about finding their own answers; it tends to either lead to the loss of a customer or a stroppy or put-out Hiraeth, both of which can be trouble all on their own. Sam, for one, is absolutely no help in preventing the inevitable ice cream binges they go on when they’re in a bad mood, and Jo’s not particularly keen on getting to close to those teeth, so she’s started trying to ask for a raise just to pay for the havoc caused in the frozen foods aisle. So far, she’s not had much luck. It’d help if she could actually find The Manager during work hours, but he only ever seems to appear asleep in odd places, and something always keeps her from being able to wake him.

Once, Hiraeth asked her with utmost seriousness if The Manager was Mr Pringle. She wasn’t really sure how to answer, and they seemed to take her silence as a yes. The worst part of this is that the few times he’s made an appearance, The Manager has responded to the name as if nothing were amiss. Hireath’s smugness only ever makes her feel more tired.

She lets them stay because they make Sam happy, and that’s the _only_ reason.

(She doesn’t even realise that she’s not sure how she’d be able to make them leave even if she wanted to; she never notices how many questions Hireath asks that are directed at her about where they’re allowed to go or what they can do; never pays attention to the unspoken authority she seems to have over the place, as if her presence was important.

Hiraeth stays, and gradually learn not to cause more trouble than they’re worth.)


	2. In which Hiraeth, surprisingly, does not steal food

She finds out that Hiraeth knows the co-managers of the coffee shop next door completely by accident.

They come in holding a slice of pie - no plate, just a pie, perfectly intact and steaming hot - and she recognises it as one of Laila Thornton’s own, the kind you can get fresh if you arrive early enough in the morning on a Friday or a weekend and that costs less the longer you wait. Laila Thornton is a strange mix of generous and lucrative; this early, it’s bound to have cost at least a fiver just for the one slice, but later in the day Jo will probably be able to get a piece of the same size for under a pound.

The question is how _Hiraeth_ managed to buy it.

Just as she’s thinking of ways to make excuses for Hiraeth’s food-oriented kleptomania, Thornton herself slips in behind them holding a cake box, and she suddenly starts feeling much more willing to turn a blind eye.

“Hey, Jo!” She says with a wave, “your friend here told me about your manager, so I figured I’d drop this off.” With that, she drops the box into Jo’s arms and stands back with a smile.

She’s not really sure what to think of that, or what question to ask first.

What she ends up saying is, of course, “What the _Hell_ did they say about my manager to warrant a pie?”

Thornton just stares for a moment before laughing raucously; Jo doesn’t know what’s funny, but Hiraeth seems to be grinning wider than usual and looks smug, so she immediately becomes suspicious. Hiraeth leans forward to murmur something in Thornton’s ear which only makes her laugh harder, and Jo sighs.

“ _What?_ ”

Once her laughter dies down and becomes giggles, Thornton straightens, puts her hand on Jo’s shoulder, leans forward, and then, completely serious, says, “They told me he stole your territory.”

Jo squints. “What does that even _mean?!_ ”

Hiraeth looks entirely too pleased with themself; whatever they had been trying to say, it’s obvious that it was at least _intended_ to be helpful, so Jo just sighs, sets the pie on the counter, and lets the matter drop.

Thornton stays a while after that, making small talk and staving off both Jo’s boredom and - somehow - Hiraeth’s usual brand of mischief, only excusing herself when she realises she’s left Scarlet to run the cafe alone. Jo finds herself hoping it won’t be the last time.

(It isn’t.)

 ***

Sam is, unsurprisingly, a crap salesperson.

The only two things he’s actually particularly good at are stocking the shelves and ringing up customers, but the latter option isn’t generally a good idea, because even if he’s _good_ at it, he’s not exactly _customer friendly_. He’s even worse at the customer service desk, though, so if it’s ever a choice between one and the other, she knows which job to send Sam to.

Sam, the oblivious thing, thinks he’s all that, and he’s just _so proud_ whenever he does the smallest thing.

She finds out, eventually, that this is because he thinks he makes a decent human, and she regrets her impulsive laugh immediately at the crestfallen look on his face. She scrambles to clarify to him that yes, of course, he’s very convincing, but _Sam, you do know humans only have two eyes, right?_

Sam doesn’t really seem to understand this, but after a moment of staring blankly he closes his leftmost eye and looks at her, before saying, hesitantly, “I̡͞s ̧́t̢̢͜hì̷̕s͠͝ ̴͡b̶̴et͞t̷̨̛e̴͟͢r͠?̴̷”

She takes a slow breath before telling him that yes, he’s perfect. _Good job, Sam, I can’t even tell the difference._

He winks for almost a week before giving up after walking into things a few too many times. She tells him that he made a good effort and buys him a chocolate bar, which seems to cheer him up just fine.

 ***

That night, eating dinner alone on her couch, she starts a blog.

It’s nothing special, and she doesn’t expect it to go far, but she lovingly dubs it _Caring For Your Local Cryptids_  and makes a few posts containing short stories about her experience in the store; it’s fun and self-indulgent, and she comes back to it the next day, and the day after that - sometimes they’re no more than a few sentences long, and other times she goes on long tangents about Hiraeth’s latest fixation or Sam’s most recent attempt at being human.

It takes about a month before a few lucky reblogs start to make people take notice, and after that, she starts adding pictures to the posts every now and then.

Sam loves it, of course - seems to find it endearing - and as always Hiraeth revels in the attention; one story about The Moonpie Incident results in a comment saying that their name should be ‘Moony’, and they latch onto this name immediately.

Moony is, somehow, less terrifying than Hiraeth.

She’s not sure that’s entirely how she should think of them, but she can’t help but notice the personality changes - if they introduce themselves as Hiraeth, it is almost always because of a sketchy-looking customer, and they trail them around the shop with sharp smiles and barely-there hissing, making the shadows grow into strange, terrifying things in the edge of her vision whenever they stray too close.

When they introduce themselves as Moony, though, their eyes glow brighter than ever, and their voice rings loud and undistorted - the first time she’d heard it, she’d not been looking at them, and she’d thought it was some _really_ creepy customer, but a human one nonetheless. Moony took offence to this, but didn’t hiss and spit like Hiraeth would - just pouted until she gave them a pound and told them to buy something.

It should’ve been meaningless to them, with how often Hiraeth raided the confectionary aisle with or without cash, but Moony seemed thankful anyway.

Moony chatters a lot, too - usually not about anything in particular, but not in the same way that Sam can talk for hours about things she can’t possibly understand; Moony’s brand of nothing simply includes narrating everything that happens in the shop, interspersed with anecdotes that only just dip into uncanny valley and the latest gossip that she’s sure they get from stray cats or something, with the way they deliver it. It’s weirdly endearing, and during her shifts she finds herself listening to Moony’s sibilant, bell-like voice just as much as Sam’s hushed, disembodied one.

It seems to Jo, though, that as the days grow colder, Sam gets increasingly more talkative.

It’s _strange_ , because she’s so used to decoding his not-quite-a-voice that she hadn’t realised he actually could talk normally, and hearing him _speak_ is just a little unsettling, in the same way a wet cat is just a little angry.

The thing is, he sounds.. shockingly normal, actually. She’d have thought he’d have a voice like… like _something_ , at least, something namelessly horrifying and imperceptibly huge, but it’s just - _not_. There’s a vaguely unsettling undertone of something soft and sinister, but it’s barely-there and only half audible.

It’s strange, because it just doesn’t fit his appearance at all - accept it _does, it totally does, he’s a seven foot tall deer thing in a ratty shirt and a signed name tag, of course it bloody fits._

It’s around this time that the shop comes to resemble something that Rudolph might have thrown up on.

She doesn’t particularly care for Christmas - other than a roommate she scarcely sees, she lives alone, and while she likes the general feel of the festive season, she’s always been a fairly indifferent to the holiday itself.

Sam seems to think it’s wonderful; she’s not sure why, but she’s pretty certain it has very little to do with any kind of tradition and everything to do with tinsel. Hiraeth has taken to decorating his antlers with the stuff like some kind of weird, very sharp tree, and she doesn’t have the heart to tell either of them off for wasting it, especially not when it turns out to be attracting customers.

It’s this last realisation that gives her an idea.

Thornton agrees immediately, and Scarlet is no harder to convince - soon, Sam’s spending most of his time standing by the door holding a plate of their cookies (which somehow never truly cool) and preening for all he’s worth.

Even though it’s not them on display, Hiraeth adores the attention, and takes on a multitude of small forms for the sole purpose of making nests in tinsel amongst Sam’s antlers. It’d probably be adorable, if only they didn’t always manage to get the number of eyes or limbs or mouths wrong in their intended form.

(She’s lying; it’s adorable anyway, because of course it is.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Moonpie Incident will not be discussed and will forever be left to the imagination, but know that It Happened And Hiraeth is a creature with only one emotion, and that emotion is hubris.


	3. In which Moony learns Emotions and Sam learns to reflect

Moony likes changing their shape; it’s something she’d figured out quickly when, during their first meeting, they never stayed in any one form for more than half an hour; and she didn’t notice, at first, that this amount of time had gradually been getting longer, but she  _ does  _ notice when they spend a whole day in the form of something almost humanoid, with two arms and two legs (and six wings) and two eyes (that glow) and a mouth that moves like a mouth should (with lots of extremely sharp teeth) and fingers and opposable thumbs (which end in claws).

 

She asks Sam about it while they’re distracted with people-watching, and he doesn’t really explain it very well, but she manages to decipher something along the lines of  _ respect  _ and  _ familiarity _ and a show of something that her brain apparently isn’t able to process as a word, so she chalks it up to Weird Elder God Customs and lets the matter drop.

 

Moony does seem to genuinely love this new form, though, so regardless of the reason, she tells them they’re pretty whenever they ask and, after a week, even gifts them an old, purple scarf. It’s nothing special, but it makes Moony ecstatic, and when it doesn’t quite fit around their giant mane of shimmery blue feathers, they manage to tie it into something resembling a floppy bow around one black horn.

 

She thinks she sees Sam complementing them on it later that day, and she’s not sure if uncanny, eldritch shadow-creatures can blush, but that’s the impression she gets from Moony when they trill happily and duck their head.

 

The scarf lasts much longer than she expects it to; it had been a scruffy old thing anyway, and Hiraeth isn’t exactly careful by nature. They take care if it, though, and Jo is oddly touched.

 

It’s ages before she sees even a single new hole in the worn fabric, and she only notices because Moony themself comes to her to  _ apologise _ , for whatever reason, citing something about a scuffle with a thing they call Pluvegn and acting extremely guilty overall. She’s ridiculously confused, but she lets them know that they hadn’t offended her at all and that whoever or whatever the thing they’d fought with was probably to blame, anyway. Moony latches onto this idea as if it’s some kind of lifeline, and starts voraciously explaining to her just how awful and stupid Pluvegn apparently is, and how they’ll most definitely be getting their revenge with one over-the-top scheme after another, most of which seem to involve one-upping their supposed ‘mortal enemy’ in one way or another.

 

She gets the sense that they don’t really mean much of what they say, and even that they don’t  _ actually _ dislike Pluvegn - she’s seen exactly how viscerally terrifying Hiraeth is capable of being, and none of the scheming involves anything close to that - but they’re so caught up in the drama of it that she just laughs along and lets them talk. A while later, they seem to have forgotten the torn scarf entirely, so she considers this a good decision.

 

If anything, all the conversation leads to is Jo suddenly wondering exactly how many creatures like Sam and Moony there actually are in the area, because, assuming that Pluvegn is included within this list, that’s three within a few months - and all appearing after Sam stepped out of the woods. And she  _ does _ wonder, she really does, because what if that was some kind of turning point?

 

What if not all of them are friendly?

 

She doesn’t even know what ‘they’  _ are _ , but somehow the thought still worms it’s way into her mind, coils around her heart, constricts her lungs and throat - because Sam is…

 

Sam is scary  _ by accident.  _

 

And so is Moony, most of the time, Moony with eyes that sparkle and too many teeth, and who loves the thing that goes by a human name and wears human clothes but, she remembers, is  _ forced _ to remember, really, truly  _ isn’t,  _ who gets guilty over torn scarves and smug over torn-open emotions, ripping fear from annoying customers and ripping Moony-shaped holes in her heart, and Sam-shaped ones, too, because she loves too easily and her boys need someone to keep them out of trouble.

 

Because they’re scary by accident, and she’s scared of anything that might make them want them to be afraid.

 

She closes up the store that night with a lot in her mind, and she barely notices the thing watching from between the stars.

  
  


By human standards, it has been six months, twelve days, four hours, and about two-and-a-half minutes since Ceros met Jo. He’s still not really sure what all that means, because time is strange and confusing, but He likes to think that He’s starting to get it by now, and Jo seems to like that He can tell the time better than the clock above the cash register, so that’s nice.

 

Jo is a nice person. Hiraeth agrees with Him on this point, which means it must be true, because Hiraeth likes to pretend not to agree with things just for the novelty of it, and has only recently begun to agree with Jo, ever since she gave them another Name.

 

Names are important. Jo does not seem to understand this, because it’s one of the things that, when He tries to talk to her about it, makes her stare blankly at Him until he is forced to move on to different topics. But they  _ are  _ important, because when He is Sam, He is small and soft, but when He is Ceros, He is the forest, and He is large, and He definitely wouldn’t fit into either the shop  _ or  _ Jo’s ‘comfort zones’. 

 

(He likes that term.  _ Comfort zone.  _ It’s very human.)

 

They’re important, also, because Hiraeth may have been the demon He fell in love with, but Moony is the one that loves Him twice as much.

 

For that matter, Moony loves  _ everything  _ twice as much, not just Sam or Ceros or any other Name He might take - they love Jo and the nice humans next door with the food and the comforting presences, and they love the sky and the rain and the  _ stars,  _ they  _ love _ the stars, more than anything, more than Him, and that’s okay, because seeing Moony love something is like watching a sunrise, or something equally wonderful and awesome, and He’s never thought that He’d think that about anything other than Hiraeth’s dramatic, soul-rending storms before, but He  _ does,  _ and it makes Him  _ so glad. _

 

He’s pretty sure they even love Pluvegn, but only a little bit. Or maybe they always did, because Hiraeth always loves a good challenge, and Pluvegn is nothing if not a good rival. Even Jo seems to understand this, although He’s not sure how she found out, since Moony doesn’t generally talk about Pluvegn, and they’re always Moony around Jo these days, never Hiraeth, in the same way that He is always Sam and never Ceros.

Sometimes, Ceros wonders if He isn’t moving too fast; He’s used to the slow, quiet language of the trees, the movement which comes from gradual growth and nothing more. Now, He’s always  _ doing  _ something, even when it’s just something trivial - and it’s not the He dislikes this, or wants to be particularly slow, but He’s -

 

_ Different. _

 

It feels as though His Name no longer means quite what it did when it was first given to Him, like it doesn’t quite  _ fit  _ anymore, not to the meaning it once had and not to the creature He used to be. He doesn’t resent it; He’s just confused, because Names do not change.  _ Things  _ change, and then they have  _ different  _ Names, but the Names themselves never do, they’re a constant, a reliable fact in an ever-changing universe.

 

Apart from  _ His Name,  _ apparently, and He feels as though that should be worrying. 

 

It’s one of the few things He doesn’t talk to Jo about; He’s not sure if she would understand, and He’s not sure He’d  _ want  _ her to; somehow, it’s much more intimate than anything else He’s ever discussed with her - comprehended or otherwise - and He’s not used to feeling exposed, especially not to something so small. It’s strange, and it scares Him.

 

Hiraeth scares Him, too, but that night, when He sits among the deer and the stags, He finds himself confiding in Moony.

 

Moony’s pretty good at the whole comfort thing, apparently. The next day, He’s almost forgotten His worries completely.

 

***

 

When Ceros first met Hiraeth, it was in the midst of a storm. 

 

It had been long ago - long,  _ long  _ ago, when He wasn’t Alone and when meeting something both new and More wasn’t such a novelty. Before they’d left, before He’d slept, before He’d met Jo and learned the wonders of humanity.

 

Hiraeth had  _ terrified  _ Him, and He’d been instantly addicted.

 

They hadn’t even talked, that first time, but Ceros had reached out and a detached part of Him had brushed against billowing storm clouds, and Hiraeth had brushed back, static and searing white pain, hot and cold and it had been  _ euphoric,  _ and Ceros hadn’t ever told anybody else, by the time the storm had passed. Hadn’t told, even though Hiraeth was something Unknown and Dangerous, because, that night, He knows He had become intrinsically  _ theirs. _

 

Centuries later, the thought still makes Him dizzy with something warm and heady, something intoxicating; it mirrors all Hiraeth is, and He knows it’ll  _ never _ go away, not that He wants it to.

 

***

 

He tends to separate Things That Have Happened into three distinct categories.

 

The first is Before, which means a lot of things - Before, as in Before He Was Alone, or Before He Slept, or sometimes even Before Hiraeth, though the last of those sometimes crosses over with the others a little.

 

The second is a fuzzy sort of half-memory of when He was Asleep, dormant in the forest, experiencing every lifetime of every creature as if it were His own. He doesn’t remember much of that time, but He also  _ does,  _ because how could He ever possibly  _ forget? _

 

The third is, of course, quite simply After Jo, which is strange, He thinks, because Jo isn’t what drew him out of the woods, not initially, but something about her is Important, so He keeps the title as it is.

 

Hiraeth had been with Him, He thinks, in the Time He Wasn’t Quite Him, dancing through the forest and through His thoughts and in His bones, never quite talking, something intimate and mysterious, and He’d never forgotten them, not even when He wasn’t actually Himself, because Hiraeth is and always has been  _ So Much More  _ and He had  _ craved it, craved them,  _ this strange, alien thing with a mind so much bigger than His own.

 

He knows, now, that He had been right in all of His assumptions of Hiraeth, but He also knows that the fear, as Jo might say, is really,  _ really _ hot.

 

(It’s a weird term. He doesn’t understand the human tendency to compare attraction to temperature, but then there’s a storm on the horizon, static in the air, a crack as a tree which He can feel like a part of Himself is split in two by lightning, and he thinks he understands, because the rain is cool and soothing but the lightning is  _ hot, searing hot, tearing through bark and soil and mud,  _ and there’s a taste to the air like ozone and iron which reminds Him of blood.)

 

Jo asked Him, once, if Hiraeth is dangerous. He’s not sure she understood His answer, because He didn’t quite understand Himself.

 

(Yes; the answer is yes, the answer is  _ always  _ yes, but isn’t that  _ exciting,  _ isn’t that just  _ wonderful, intoxicating, vibrantly beautiful -  _ and He wonders if perhaps this isn’t just how Hiraeth hunts, whatever they are.

 

He decides, when Hiraeth is caressing the edges of his consciousness from somewhere far away and unnamable, that He doesn’t care.)

 

***

 

They grow closer in friendship far slower than they did in all other ways, and He gets the sense that Jo might have found this strange, initially.

 

She’s very good at Understanding Things, even when He doesn’t explain them. He’d brought Hiraeth to the store only after having had their first ever conversation, in which He’d been surprised to learn that they thought  _ He  _ was the scary one in their relationship, which really just wouldn’t do, so He’d initially intended to have Jo rank them to make a final decision.

 

But when they’d gotten there, it was like the  _ fearsome-huge-awesome-terrifying  _ nature of Hiraeth had been switched off, or dampened, and they’d spent the whole time making a nuisance of themselves and not much more. He’d learned later that Hiraeth had done this deliberately, had come into  **Jo’s Space** (they had emphasised the Importance of the distinction in owner very enthusiastically) and had stuffed themselves into a small, feathery, gently glowing body, had done it for  _ her,  _ and it makes Him melt, because He’d known Hiraeth was terrifying, but not that they were also caring and kind and even, at times, grudgingly worried about Smaller Things’ safety, and that had been the moment that He’d put a Name to Them - The Two Of Them, the sum of their parts; and He’d called Them, for lack of other Words,  _ Love. _

 

***

 


	4. In which our pasts do not define us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an extremely short chapter, but it’s something of an interim anyway - a brief look at what may or may not be our resident abominations’ pasts, and a clue as to the nature of Hiraeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I’ll get out another longer chapter eventually, but I hope this will tide y’all over for the time being.

Ceros is, if nothing else, an avid storyteller.

 

Moony had jumped for joy when they had first discovered this - one of their absolute  _ favourite  _ things, right up there with the stars, is  _ knowing things;  _ they love to learn, and to explore, and to discover, and it is for this reason that Ceros reaches far into Himself, searches through the farthest reaches of His memory to drag out the  _ best  _ and the  _ oldest  _ of His stories - one of the ones that He remembers with something which seems more like instinct than conscious thought, and which even He has partially forgotten.

 

***

 

_ In the beginning, _ said the first of humanity;  _ in the beginning, it started like this _ \- and they painted on walls and wrote in languages of their own devising, and slowly, slowly, the stories began to spread.

 

_ It was uncomfortable,  _ said the first of them,  _ and at first they did not wish to save us.  _ And they talked of arguments, between seasons and between creatures, and they talked of gods and arks and great, terrible floods.

 

There was talk of equal and opposite forces, of meetings in the middle and life born of chaos, or of will, or, sometimes, out of nothing at all.

 

Their own story is lost, now, lost to a people long dead, whose tales never survived the slow erosion of time, but He remembers, and He refuses to let the stories fade like the writing on the stone tablets which once held them.

 

And so, in His mind, He knows, very intimately, that _it started_ _like this -_ it started with a great, black bird, whose wings made up the night sky, and who cradled the world with soft feathers and threatened sharp talons at the creatures of the Nothing who would seek to harm it. It started with flickering lights between black down, which the people said were the stars, and they said they were bright and burning and beautiful, and they said their name was _wanderer,_ and _curiosity,_ and _tell-me, show-me, teach-me,_ and in answer to the call that was their name, the people said _you will be taught;_ and so rose another great bird, like the first, but this one was smaller, and coloured in hues of fire, and sat a ways off to the side - the people called it _knowledge,_ and they said it was the Sun.

 

The Great Black Bird, which the people called Oblivion, saw the Sun and said that he was beautiful; the Sun, having been very much alone before coming upon Oblivion and the Earth, did not know what to do with such praise, and became so flustered that he shone even brighter than usual, and the light was so great that Oblivion’s wings were cast in hues of blue. Once the Sun’s surprise had faded, she gave a mighty laugh and said that the Sun should stay, and, not wanting to become a burden, the Sun offered his wisdom to her children, in return for her hospitality.

 

The stars, said the people, were in many minds about this proposal, but came to agree on a single opinion - they wanted to  _ know,  _ and so were very excited to learn the Sun’s teachings. 

 

So excited, in fact, that, upon hearing the proposal, they flew from their mother’s wings and converged upon the Sun, singing their delight, and laughing and dancing and pressing so tightly together that it seemed as though they might be one being, and the Sun, feeling a bashful sort of pride, told them to settle down so that they might listen when he talked.

 

The stars, eager, quieted, and listened in rapt attention as he told them secrets that he had never told anyone before - and, oh, what secrets he held! But he told them, in a kind and gentle voice, which of them should remain as such, and which should be shared freely; the stars sang their praises unto him when the secrets had stopped - they had never learned so many things! - and soon rushed back to their mother to relate the good news, and she laughed with the good nature of any proud parent, and held them close in her wings once more.

 

It was a great many aeons before anything changed, and in that time, these old stories were forgotten; the ones which rose in their place held bits and pieces of the original, but they got muddled, details lost to time. Even Ceros has lost His recollection of the events that followed - He knows of a bond forged between the Two Great Birds, and He knows of a fourth, nameless character who may have been the Earth itself, or perhaps the culmination of its life - He knows of a long,  _ long  _ sleep, and of a journey taken by the stars, far away from their mother, an infinite exploration of the unknown. He pauses His story to tell Moony that they remind Him of the stars, and they make a surprised and delighted sound high in their throat, and tell Him in return that if they are the stars, that He must be the Earth.

 

Their conversation spirals, after that - Moony asks Him question upon question about His story, asks Him where He first heard it and if it was ever True; He tells them that He can’t remember, and that He is sure it must have been - sure in the way that He is sure that there is something more to Hiraeth than perhaps either of them know, in the way He is sure that Jo is something special all on her own. He tells them about how something in the story resonates deeply within Him, something which is almost nostalgia, but not quite.

 

Neither of them need to sleep, but after that, they drift off in a tangle of limbs and antlers and feathers and  _ safety,  _ and He when he wakes, His Name is Sam, and the story is but a fond memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this pretty late at night on a burst of comment-driven inspiration, so I’m really sorry for any typos or mistakes - I’ll comb through when I’m more awake to catch anything too glaring.
> 
> I’m gonna try and write another chapter sometime soon, but my life’s been unfortunately busy lately, so no promises. Remember, though, I live off your feedback! (And on that note, thanks sooo much to QueenOfTheQuill, I wasn’t planning on another chapter anytime soon but your comments made my whole month so I did it anyways)


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